Thinking aloud through sketches, words and humour

Tag: words

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.

I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations.

-George Bernard Shaw

What a beautiful thought and a clear philosophy to live your life by. I chanced upon this in a Robin Sharma video and was mesmerized by the words and it’s call to action.

Life is about burning brightly each day. Robin Sharma in his video asks in a similar vein, what would you do if it was the last year of your life?
How can we make each day epic and burn so brightly and own each minute as a magical gift. To be completely in the moment and be a beacon of energy and positivity doing what we love with unending passion and fun.

Like this:

A vision board is a tool that has time and again helped me create a road map and clarify my own picture of where I want to be in the future and become a catalyst to achieve the dreams. I have scoured articles and books to know more about the effectiveness of a vision board. I have changed and tinkered with my goals and pictures over and over and what I want with my vision has organically evolved each time I created a new board.

When I look back at all the road maps I set out for myself it’s amazing how different each one is and how easily I have floated towards achieving them soon after I made them. My initial vision boards were skewed towards material aspects and studded with manifestation of only wealth. Eventually there’s been a journey towards balance, health, family, happiness, work excellence, laurels and charity. Balance of work life and everyday happiness became the primary goal of achievement eventually.

I have made and remade many vision maps and boards and found some that worked and many more that didn’t. Here’s 5 secrets on making a vision board that’s transformational.

1. Know what you want

It is so important to know what you want for yourself. Close your eyes, project to the future and ask yourself what you really want. Then ask yourself what do I want this for? What will this give me? Why is that goal is part of your dream?

Make a list of your asks and categorize them once they pass your questions. Ensure every aspect of your vision resonates deep down within.
This is an opportunity to truly introspect your ideal life 5 and 10 years later and have a crystal clear idea of what it looks like. 2.Transport yourself to the future and live the moment

What I learnt over the years and through discussions and reading is that the more clear you are of your vision the higher the possibility of achieving it. It’s important to be able to close your eyes and see yourself in an already achieved state.

Be able to see the surrounding, smell the ambience, feel the textures, hear the sounds and play the movie in your head of yourself being there. For example if you are visualizing your dream home, every detail should be accessible in your mind. The walls, the furniture, the sounds, smell and the moments. See your emotions when you have achieved your vision, interact with the dream and it will increase the confidence in arriving at the destination.

Even writing your dreams from an already achieved state and with specifics helps accentuate the clarity of the vision. For example instead of saying “I want to publish a book by 2018” write down “By June 31st 2018, I have published my book titled ‘start up failures’ and 100,000 copies have been sold in the first year”.

3.Create detailed visual boards across sections

Make vision boards for each category of your life and populate them with pictures of your dream. I have a few sections which I have evolved over time.

Creating vision boards across these categories have helped getting clarity under each section and makes sure the vision is complete. Involving the family and getting their buy in also helps cement these visions and enlist them as catalysts.

It helps further to get yourself in as many pictures of the vision board. For example, if it’s a dream home or a car, go to the house and get a picture in front of the porch or seated inside your dream car doing a test drive.
To make these vision boards, varied tools can be used. The easiest is to do the old scrap book method of cutting pictures and pasting on a board. Otherwise, Pinterest can be an amazing tool, PowerPoint or keynote your vision board. Once they are done, make them into a poster you can place somewhere that you can see every day is the best method to help actualising the dreams. Maybe on your bathroom mirror or as a poster in your office or bedroom.

4.Make action steps for each board to achieve the same

Often we make the mistake of making a vision board and expecting it to work magically for us. Detailing action steps to achieving some of these hairy audacious goals goes a long way in making them come true and giving it steps to reality.

For example, if your vision is to write a book, your action steps would be:

a.finalise subjects in the next 3 months

b.start writing and keep aside an hour every weekend towards this from December

c.Find an editor to work with

d. Attend the literary festival and find a mentor
This should be applied across as many categories with tangible steps to achieve your 5 or 10 year vision board in bite size chunks. The trick is to dream without boundaries and make them big hairy audacious goals and then to break them down into practical steps to get there.

The biggest stumbling block to achieving success and our dreams are our deep rooted relation with the concept of success and money. We are all brought up with phrases we hear in our youth from family and friends. “Rich people are corrupt”, “you can’t be successful without hard work”, “money is evil” and many more thoughts and advice that slow us down without us realizing them.
It’s important to work on being ready internally for the success that will come and prepare ourselves to embrace the future. Our self fulfilling prophecy is engineered deep in the mind and every preparation will fail if we don’t believe or desire success within.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

-Henry David Thoreau

Tell the world!

Like this:

I explored adding more color to the monks. Detailed the buildings and depicted them in concentric circles to symbolise the inner journey to find oneself.
Finding your own quiet spot and rejuvenating yourself need not await a vacation but finding balance everyday, all the time.

Tell the world!

Like this:

Once in a while, I let the monk get away from his solitude and mediate with others. The energy of connected silence i find visually and emotionally uplifting.
In life too, we come across people who suddenly cross our paths, where you can immediately sense their aura, their positive energy and shared intent. Suddenly, there’s a connection like you knew them from a lifetime ago. People always carry their energy around them and this speaks way before they even utter a word.

Tell the world!

Like this:

Meditation is best defined as a state where the mind is silent, completely still and without distraction. The mind is clear, relaxed, and focused inward. We aspire to achieve a state where the mind is silent and no longer distracts.

Every individual will have their own process to get to this state of being. It’s not necessary to attain the state of inner clarity only through traditional methods. Some may find it being lost in a pure state of bliss within their craft, or work, or music, at a concert or the opera, sitting by a brook, trekking or as a whirling Sufi dervish. It’s about switching off into a zone where every external distraction switches off one by one till you are left in a state of pure balance.

For me this state is when I sketch. I find myself at peace and being able to blank every bit of information that wants to catch my mind. I find myself enveloped in a place of complete inner focus and stillness.
This sketch is both my moment of being completely still and also depicting how each individual has their own mediation process.

Tell the world!

Like this:

To be in a place where you can mould your self without the baggage of the past. To be able to access, be aware of and then let go of everything which doesn’t sit well with our values. To be able to simply be in a state of equanimity and see situations and moments for what they are.

To reach a place of equanimity, we need to let go. And for that that to happen we need to know ourselves.

This sketch is a simplified depiction of the pursuit of letting go and telling ourselves that its that easy. Just let go.

Tell the world!

Like this:

An illustration I made over coffee yesterday where I attempted to depict what meditation is for me.

Meditation is to spend time in quiet thought where the mind is an empty vessel. The mind learns to form a ring that keeps external chatter completely away and slowly submerge into a space of complete inner silence. This is the space where we uncover the purest form of who we really are.